Tag Archives: rage

Hi everyone. It’s November!—and there’s a briskness in the air and the awareness of the holidays approaching. For many highly sensitive survivors that comes with a bitter-sweet feeling–of light and love from God above (the true reason for the season) mixed with the grief of a lost childhood and sad or painful holiday memories of being misunderstood and diminished. Or it can be an overwhelming feeling of dread on some days for many reasons related to your present relationship with your some bullies in your life, and on other days of stress–being caught up in the busy-ness of getting ready for the big days ahead for your loved ones–often too busy to feel anything at all.

Depending on where you are in your recovery, it is normal for you to be feeling all of these different ways. Be kind to yourself no matter how you are feeling and please try to slow down, breathe deeply and take self-care breaks–stop and be aware of the negative messages in your head and change them to kind words that you deserved as a child such as: Everything is going to be all right, You are doing a good job, It’s okay to make mistakes, You are special, deep, and a rare gift to this planet.

Affirmations you can say to yourself are: I love and approve of myself, I am safe, and, my favorite, I give myself permission to be the best that I can be. This last one is helpful especially because often others may have been threatened and jealous of your gifts and so, sensing this, because you were highly sensitive and empathic, you protected them by hiding your gifts away so they would feel better. Giving yourself permission to be the best that you can be can be so empowering and satisfying–like suddenly realizing, “Oh, wow, I don’t have to protect anyone anymore and I can just relax and be awesome!” Many of you feel guilty for everything even for your own creative and artistic gifts! A caretaker from childhood may have caused you to feel shame for expressing them. Please take your gifts out of hiding and take a good look at the truth of the gifts and talents that you brought with you to this planet. They are your gifts and yours alone and you deserve to enjoy and feel good about them and share them with others!

Hi everyone. May is approaching. It’s a big month for many. If you have a difficult relationship with your mother, you may find yourself here, reading this, because you need support on how to cope….

If you are a mom then it may help to stay focused on the fact that this is a special day for you as a mother–my two children and my husband like to make it special which is wonderful and I look forward to spending the day with them and being the focus of their attention. My daughter’s birthday is always around Mother’s Day and our anniversary is in May so there is always alot going on.

If you are not a parent then allow yourself to be busy with all the positive things that are Spring related–even spring cleaning and decluttering to bring renewed positive energy into your home. (Distracting yourself may only be helpful if you are also working through any painful feelings that arise by writing in a journal for your eyes only or purging your pain verbally with a safe person in your life who can be an enlightened witness for you.) I allow myself to be distracted because I know in my heart now (after all of my inner grief work) that it is okay for me to detach from any relationship that does not feel like I have the freedom to be ME! I no longer feel guilty for putting LOVE and self-compassion first in my life. It is for your higher good to have healthy boundaries in your life–detach from people who you do not feel safe around to be YOURSELF! After you fully heal and feel safe to be YOU without being triggered and stressed then you can reassess your desire to have a closer relationship with any people in question. It is okay whatever you decide to do–just do what is the least stressful for your healing soul.

So, focusing on being positive and on the other positive events going on for you in May and making them special for your loved ones will help to supercede any negative feelings that may arise. And isn’t that what we all need to do all the time anyway? Build ourselves up with positive messages–affirmations if you will–the opposite of what we (highly sensitive children) may have received growing up. For example, tell yourself “I can do it!” instead of “you can’t do that–who do you think you are!” And “I love and approve of myself” instead of “what were you thinking–why did you do it that way!” And say, “I am safe” for the dreaded “how dare you talk to me that way–you are so ungrateful!” Perhaps now you can see how ridiculous the accusations and blaming are, because you know the truth about you is the opposite and these were said out of inner fear, inner shame and ignorance and not necessarily to hurt you. But at the time, these accusations were excruciatingly painful to you. As highly sensitive children we trusted our caretakers more than we trusted ourselves.

There are so many more examples you may be thinking of, but the point here is not to believe these negative messages in our heads, given to us by someone with conditional love as a parenting method that was passed down for many generations without guilt. Conditional love is not love. The opposite of these messages is probably more the real truth. When you find yourself thinking something negative like “I am never going to get this done” or “I am not good at this”–turn it around and be the ideal mother to yourself that you never had. Say “I am doing a good job” and “I am great at this” and “look how much I got done already”. You deserve these positive messages now and you deserved them as a child.

I can feel the stress of Mother’s Day approaching from all of you outthereand so I want to give you some additional extra support to help you stay strong and be true to yourself and honor your feelings. As highly sensitive people, we want so badly to do the right thing, the kindest thing, the most compassionate response at all times and so we feel guilt for not wanting to honor thy mother on this day that is meant to honor those mothers who are honorable. And so I am going to write out some quotes from a book that helped me in my darkest hours when I needed them most at the age of 25. The name of the book is “Cutting Loose–An Adult’s Guide To Coming To Terms With Your Parents”. This book by Howard M. Halpern, Ph.D. is full of wonderful emotionally healthy ways to deal with every kind of difficult parent you can imagine. There is the martyred parent, the despotic parent, the seductive parent, the moralistic parent, and of course the parent with a narcissistic disturbance but who is remorseful about their actions if you confront them. The book talks about all kinds of ways you can learn to communicate with these kinds of parents and for some of you there may actually be some light at the end of the tunnel if your parent is genuinely remorseful! A very helpful part of the book is the very last chapter that talks about dealing with the narcissistic parent that takes an adversary stance. Here is some of it:

“The narcissistic parent in a adversary posture is an enraged peacock. When you stop trying to win his (her) nurturant caring by being a compliant extension of him, when you no longer exalt him, when you stop following his pre-scribed script, he will react with the indignant certainty, “If you are not a part of me, you’re against me.” And, if you require reciprocity in your relationship with him, if you insist on a flow of give and take, he will feel that you are trying to take everything from him and always have your own way. He (she) may be willing to write you off rather than submit to such an obviously unfair demand on your part, and unfortunately you may have to let him do just that.”

“The form a parent’s rigidity may take when it hardens into an adversary position will differ with the type of inner child he has, but what they all have in common is enormous rage and outrage if you fail to act as they expect. And theirs is not a transient outburst at unexpected frustration or disappointment–their fury may calcify into a chronic suspiciousness or hatred in which you can sense the willingness to destroy the relationship with you and even to wreck your happiness and theirs rather than accept a new way of relating.”

“Depending on you, the experience of your parent perceiving you as an enemy will either so traumatize you that you will choose to regress back to the old song and dance, or will so clarify how impossible it is to have a viable, constructive relationship with him that it will make it easier for you to terminate the tie. You know what going back means; you’ve been there. Under the circumstances, if you’ve come so far that you’ve been able to change the song and dance and this has done nothing but propel them into an adversary stance, it is clearly better to make the painful decision to let it go.”

Hoping this is helpful for you to read! As I have said before, it takes a lot of inner strength and outside supports to take the action of setting boundaries with a parent. If you are one of the people who is in this position and struggling with guilt on this Mother’s Day week, please know that you are not alone. I am here to say, everything is going to be okay, if you will be especially kind to yourself and your wounded inner child this week. Think back to some things you loved as a child and do that for yourself on Mother’s Day. Ride your bike, play with your dog or cat, skip through a field of flowers, read a favorite comic book, watch your favorite show, take a bubble bath, draw a silly picture, or finger paint. If this just seems too silly to you, wasn’t it fun just imagining yourself doing those things? That is the power of visualizations and affirmations to change your mood–it really works! The strong part of you can mother, nurture, comfort and love the wounded inner child part of you on Mother’s Day–imagine the adult you comforting the child you.

This powerful exercise will help you in your healing if you do it whenever you are feeling a lot of self-doubt, guilt, or emotional pain. Also do something special for yourself. Maybe you could buy yourself a small gift you’ve been wanting or wanted as a child as a reward for being strong. You survived! And as a highly sensitive person (HSP), you are stronger and have more to give to others because of the compassion you recognize that you deserved but never received from your mother. Be the mother you never had to yourself and you can begin to heal your childhood wounds and find your true voice and become the person that you are meant to be. God Bless You All.

Today I have decided to release the lyrics for my song, “Finally I See, Now I’m Free”. This song was written at a time when I realized the futility of a relationship in my life and was grieving for what would never be–but also discovered an inner strength and a new found sense of freedom. I hope it brings you some comfort and strength during this difficult week.

Hi everyone. I have been wanting to share my song “Help Me to Forgive” for a while, but I wanted to explain what I mean by forgiveness because it can be such a confusing and guilt-inducing concept. For myself, forgiving was something I kept trying to do because I thought it was the right thing to do.

As highly sensitive people (HSPs), we want so badly to be compassionate, fair, and kind. I kept forgiving and forgetting the past. I pretended like everything was going to be okay if I just forgave and moved on but I continued to let myself be walked on. I ignored my feelings and kept telling myself I was forgiving and that was the right thing to do. For me, it was the wrong thing to do and the pattern continued until I felt so hurt one day by blatant disrespect for my feelings–when I made a simple assertion that was not to this person’s liking and then they said they were going to do it anyway whether I liked it or not.

I could not deny my feelings any longer. My rage shocked me–I knew it was from childhood and way out of proportion to the event at hand. But I listened to my feelings and it felt good to feel this truth–it was how I had always been treated me and I kept giving out the benefit of the doubt. The anger awakened something in me that needed to come alive–my assertiveness about my needs and feelings and about the boundary that kept being crossing and I kept letting it happen all because I felt it important to forgive and forget.

Now this anger fueled me in a healthy way for a while. It felt good to feel instead of being numb and self-doubting for so long. I wrote a lot about it and found myself in my journaling to have a lot of wise insights and a lot of reasons to be completely fed up with the insidious and mean things that were said to me with a smile.

But I was still so angry, it scared me how angry I was because it was so intense I felt hatred. And this makes sense really when, as highly sensitive children, our trust in ourselves and our spirits feel consistently stomped on until we give up and repress and hide our true selves and feelings away so completely–this is a trauma!– not feeling safe to express our intense anger we hide our true selves away. Now for the first time, I was so angry but I felt alive, I knew it was the truth I was feeling. I was somehow grateful for everything that had happened to me to give me the self-awareness to finally know the truth! Writing my feelings out helped me make sense of it all. I was able to see actions from my childhood which were the cause of much pain and self-doubt. It was very clear! I will never forget this moment in my whole life when I realized there was absolutely nothing wrong with me and that I had just been the victim of a person that I wrongly trusted with my heart and soul. So I made myself a promise not to trust this person with my private feelings (a healthy detachment) and set some boundaries for time and space to heal and it has been a very important decision in my life.

All these emotions coming up helped me connect to this wonderful aliveness–a connection to my true spirit and a connection to God and that he was there with me all along. I know it sounds strange–how could all that pain be so awakening in a positive way but it was. In the midst of the pain, I felt bliss and freedom and truth and so I knew it was right to stop trusting this person. And after a long period of intense anger, pain, grief, and then acceptance, I finally understood what all the talk and importance of forgiveness was all about–I needed to forgive God/The Universe and stopped blaming Him/It for “giving me” such a painful childhood. And I needed to forgive myself because I knew I did the best I could at figuring out a very confusing situation and for blaming myself as a child out of survival. I needed to forgive the whole situation and all the pain it caused me because I had ME again. I do not have to forgive a person who is not sorry to their face and never will be–but I do forgive what they did. I had been holding onto a lot of resentment which I didn’t realize was hurting me and taking a lot of energy.

And that is when I sat down and wrote the song “Help Me To Forgive”. I’ll never forget writing it. It was a very spiritual and pivotal moment in my life. It helped me to start the process of trying to forgive God, The Universe, and me, and the whole situation, and my pain. That is what forgiveness really means for me. Then, a few weeks later, I wrote the song “This Too Shall Pass” with a newfound ability to comfort myself through the worst feelings of rejection and betrayal.

Yes that was quite a month–September 2007. And I am glad I have these two songs to commemorate that special time when I reclaimed my true self and found inner peace and acceptance. And I also discovered a way to let God’s love in my life and really feel it and believe it. As the saying goes, ” The truth will set you free,” but you must feel your feelings to get there.

But in all my writing just now about forgiveness, I don’t want to forget my reasons for writing this post. It is to support you, the highly sensitive child with childhood wounds, from not feeling guilty that you cannot forgive yet. And that trying to forgive even God and yourself before you have gotten through all of the anger and all the repressed emotions from your childhood can leave you feeling guilty and beating yourself up. Please do not feel guilty if you are not ready to forgive anything yet. Please be kind to yourself and love and comfort the wounded child inside for all the feelings you were denied being allowed to express. That is the first step and it takes a long time to tell your whole story–to let out the entire truth. The song “Help Me To Forgive” is meant to comfort you on those times you are filled with anger and resentment about the past–and you are realizing how strong you are because of the pain you’ve been through and you are ready to stop holding on to blame. I share the lyrics with you with the utmost compassion and love in my heart.

(This post is the most viewed post on this blog with over 18,000 views and 146 comments at the present time–2019.)

As a life coach I have experience helping HSPs with emotional wounds from childhood often stemming from one or both parents being a malignant narcissist. Emotional abuse is an especially horrible experience for a highly sensitive child. It may be that you felt there was no caring about your feelings whatsoever. You may have felt invisible and as if you don’t matter. …As if your feelings don’t matter! If you were emotionally abused or continually diminished as a child by your parent it’s not healthy to hold that in! Let it out–voice it or write out the truth, acknowledge what happened and then continue to practice letting it go–releasing it–sending it out away from you to be replaced by comfort, compassion, and love for yourself. It’s not healthy to hold onto blame–but admitting it is important and the start to healing repressed and denied emotions.

At under age 2, when we can’t express ourselves with words, we can only cry to get our needs met. A sensitive child becomes obedient out of mortal fear but you can’t tell–they don’t look afraid because they have repressed it. As an obedient highly sensitive child, you put your own needs away and focus on pleasing others–but lying under the surface those unmet needs are still there! Begging for attention! Longing for love! There is nothing wrong with you! You are just afraid to speak up and ask for what you deserve.

And in some families there is no genuine love to be given. And even as a tiny child you know it. As the sensitive child in the family you felt it’s absence and it hurt like hell! And you cried and complained and may have had tantrums of despair in the grocery store! But then at some point it was too much and you stopped crying or complaining and you stopped being …YOU. The fear of being hit or just the mean look from their eyes would feel like a spear of pain through your heart and it would shut you up over and over again until you gave up and became obedient. And that is the trauma! The pain so unbearable to a child that you cannot survive it and so the repression happens. (See Alice Millers’ book, The Drama of the Gifted Child.)

If you experienced this too, the fear you had to repress also held down your true self and all the feelings that went with it. You became obedient and fearful from the trauma but instead of expressing your rage at the injustice of it all, you pushed your feelings down so deep you hid them even from yourself. You didn’t know ’til now that you have such a rich and deep inner life, and a wonderful, loving personality. It was all hiding in fear. Until now.

Now it is safe to come out. For whatever reason, your beginning years were spent in an environment of fear and no love, but there is love out there to be found! Get some support and start a life with stronger boundaries so that you can fully heal. You may need to cut the strings so you can feel safe and free. You deserve to live a life of peace that is free from guilt-inducing manipulations, negative comments undermining your confidence, fear-inducing threats, comments about the rewards others will get for being “good”.

It’s wrong to take care of the feelings of anyone who continually diminishes you in any way at the expense of yourself. It’s difficult but very necessary to set boundaries with malignant narcissists. It’s especially hard being blamed and turned into the bad guy more than anything. It’s excruciating! But you are worth the fight and you must be strong. You have to take care of yourself and your health. You will also feel a sense of exhilaration and freedom and pride in yourself for being honest and no longer pretending like you approve of how they treat you. With support from your new loved ones in your life you can move forward and go for your dreams! You can learn to comfort yourself through the hard times. Know the truth and be strong and hang on ”til the good times–“the sweet tasting good life”… I love that song…”Way Over Yonder. …the sun shinin’ golden, shinin’ right down on me.”

For more on the subjects I have written about today please click on “Recommended Books”. Thank you so much for reading. Please leave a comment about your story. It will help others to know they are not alone.

With love,

Roxanne

Way Over Yonder lyricsSongwriter: King, Carole

Way over yonder is a place that I know
Where I can find shelter from the hunger and cold
And the sweet tasting good life is so easily found
Way over yonder, that’s where I’m bound, that’s where I’m bound

I know when I get there, the first thing I’ll see
Is the sun shinin’ golden, shinin’ right down on me
Then trouble’s gonna lose me, worry, leave me behind
And I’ll stand up proudly in true peace of mind

Talkin’ about a, talkin’ about a
Way over yonder is the place I have seen
In the garden of wisdom from some long ago dream

And maybe tomorrow, I’ll find my way
To the land where the honey runs in the rivers each day
And the sweet tasting good life is so easily found, yes it is

Way over yonder, that’s where I’m
That’s where I’m bound, talkin’ about, talkin’ about
Way over yonder, that’s where I’m bound

Professional Qualifications

Hello and welcome! I am an Intuitive and Empathic Life Coach specializing in Inner Child Healing. I have a Bachelors of Science Degree in Child and Family Services with an emphasis in humanistic counseling psychology, family dynamics, and child development. I provide support and guidance for healing childhood wounds and I personally have done my own extensive inner grief work and now I help others do the same. Through this blog, it is a privilege for me to provide comfort and emotional support to any soul who is in emotional pain and to let them know there is hope and someone who understands. I was trained and worked as a peer counselor in college and I have much experience counseling friends and loved ones and now I coach others through my Coaching website truevoicelifecoaching.com. So often a person just needs a companion to listen–someone to validate the complex and confusing painful feelings that come up when childhood wounds are triggered and that keep us from moving forward to becoming our true selves. Through my blog, this community serves as an “enlightened witness” for any person who needs to be heard about childhood wounds or if you have no family members or friends who understand your feelings. We look forward to hearing from you and appreciate ALL comments whether you want to leave a comment regarding the information found here to share your own experiences, or if you feel a connection and want to lend your support for what is said. Thank you to all my readers for your support of this blog. (For more info. please see ABOUT ME) I am now adding Reiki Energy Healing Sessions and Intuitive Readings to my list of services.

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News Flash!

The stigma against Introverts and HSPs is beginning to change on a global level. See the video called The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain on TED.com. Yay Susan!
Go to ted.com and search Susan Cain, then click on her video The Power of Introverts or you can copy and paste this is your browser: http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power
_of_introverts

This is Bill Gates favorite Ted talk! Also, Elaine Aron said that Susan is really talking about highly sensitive people (HSPs)– Even though 30% of HSPs are extraverts. (In my opinion these 30% are highly creative people often with ADD symptoms — they are extremely gifted and unique people not to be seen as needing medication but as a special gift to the planet if they allow themselves to let their creative genius flow and use meditation to find balance from their overstimulation.)

Disclaimer

I am an Intuitive and Empathic Life Coach providing emotional support and intuitive guidance from knowledge gained from my experience helping others and from my own personal healing journey. I am not a licensed mental health counselor and my Life Coaching and the information shared on this blog is not to be considered mental health counseling. I do not diagnose, treat, or cure mental health disorders. My Life Coaching services and the emotional healing information shared here are not to take the place of the advice, care, and evaluation from a licensed mental health counselor, psychologist, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, physician, or other licensed health care provider. Some clients may be referred to a licensed mental health professional.
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The information shown on this website is offered in good faith. Any decisions you make based on this information and the consequences thereof are your own. Under no circumstances can you hold the author of this blog liable for any plans, actions, and/or results of actions that you choose to take.

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